Michigan

Michigan State guard Denzel Valentine (45) goes up for a layup while being guarded by Delaware guard Devon Saddler (10) in the second half of their second-round game of the 2014 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament at Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena in Spokane, Wash. on Thursday, March 20, 2014. Michigan State won the game 93-78 and will face Harvard in the third round of the tournament. (Mike Mulholland | MLive.com)

DETROIT, MI – That didn’t take long. It was just the first round* of the 2014 NCAA men’s basketball tournament and already all bets are off for Quicken Loans’ $1 billion bracket challenge.

Of all the crazy upsets that could have ended the perfect brackets' streak in the mortgage lender’s $1 billion promo stunt, who would have thought it would be a game between an 8-seed and 9-seed that would have finished them all off?

The remaining perfection was apparently wiped out not by no. 14 seed Mercer upsetting no. 3 Duke, but when Memphis took down George Washington on Friday evening.

On Friday afternoon, with 20 games down and another 12 left still left in the opening round of 64 teams in the 2014 NCAA men's basketball tournament, Quicken Loans dropped us a line to let us know that there were still 16 perfect brackets and, accordingly, 16 people who had a shot at the $1 billion prize they're giving away.

“While everyone loves an underdog, you could hear a collective groan around the office each time an upset happened,” Jay Farner, President and Chief Marketing Officer of Quicken Loans, said in a statement. “We knew that meant a lot of the entrants had their brackets bust, and lost their opportunity at the billion dollars.

The odds were not on those entrants’ side. Jeff Bergen, a mathematics professor at DePaul University, told MLive in January when the contest was announced that there are more than 9 quintillion ways to fill out a bracket.

And Bergen estimates that even someone who knows college basketball, that is, someone who understands that 1-seed teams have never lost to 16-seed teams, for example, has about a 1-in-128-billion shot at picking all of the games correctly.

With the billion-dollar prize out of reach, Quicken Loans reminds us that it will still award $100,000 toward buying, refinancing or remodeling a home to the 20 most accurate brackets, imperfect as they may be.

“While we won’t be creating America’s next billionaire, we are excited that 20 people will still receive a life-changing check for $100,000,” Farner said. “That’s still a heck of a payday for filling out a bracket.”

The company said it is also giving $1 million toward youth education initiatives in Detroit and Cleveland.

*I'm calling it the "first round" of the tournament here because, after the play-in games, it includes the first wave of one-and-done match-ups in round of 64 teams.

David Muller is the business reporter for MLive Media Group in Detroit. Email him at dmuller@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter or Facebook.